


Spring 2017 Angstmas Collection

by PineWreaths



Series: Angstmas [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: F/M, Multi, S&M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-20 02:08:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10652730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PineWreaths/pseuds/PineWreaths
Summary: A collection of prompt-based stories and drabbles for 2017. Tags relate to one or more of the stories, but please contact me if you need specifics on which tags apply to which exact stories.





	1. Inseparable, Part One

The sound of the thundercrack woke Dipper, screaming. Waddles shuffled and grunted at the side of the bed, and he reached down to give the huge pig a scratch along the dry, wire-haired skin; the nightmare had been the same as it always had been, night after night, nearly every time he closed his eyes. Ford had tried a few gizmos and meditation tricks, but the memories resurged nevertheless, to the point that his Grunkle had voiced his murmured concerns to his brother Stanley that Dipper didn’t want to get better.

In a way, that was true. Dipper didn’t want to forget. As awful as those moments were, they were the last he had with his sister, and he never wanted to let them fade an iota if he could help it. He had seen how Stan would rub his shoulder, where the scar from the night he lost his brother still persisted, and the look in his eyes when he did so, in the weeks and months before Ford’s return, that look helped remind Dipper that he would never, could never, forget.

Not really.

But Ford had been lost to intradimensional space, through a portal beyond the ken of mere human understanding. Stan’s machinations to restore the portal had been extraordinary, his success improbable, Ford’s survival for two decades and ability to return unscathed impossible. Still, his death was not assured, not written in stone, not visible for all to see.

His memory turned back towards Mabel. She had him by the hand, pulling him ahead as they had raced down the corridors of obsidian, attempting to not look at glowing runes that twisted as you read them, inscriptions on walls that made your eyes water even before you could understand what your mind had barely refused to read. She had pulled him ahead, but missed the flash of movement, missed the baleful glow from ahead that outshone the light from the runes, missed the eye and the mocking half-laugh, half-scream of outrage and fury.

The bright flash of lightning through his clenched eyes alerted him a mere second before the crashing crescendo of thunder hit him like a punch in the gut, a clenched and muted scream forcing itself past his gritted teeth. In the thunderclap he had seen it, again, the sight of an enormous fist outlined in a pale unlight that raced towards them like a bullet the size of a car.

Dipper had held on, pulled backwards with Mabel as the limb struck, a half-second later thudding with wrenching finality against the inscribed wall behind them. His own shoulder twinged, and even now, nearly a year to the day later, he knew the oval-shaped rune the harsh obsidian had carved into his back was still inflamed and visible. At the time, he had barely felt it, the impact making his world nothing but sore pain across his entire form, his eyes forced shut from shock that eclipsed any previous fear he might have hoped to overcome.

Beyond the pain, however, was an icy dread that had shot from hand to arm to brain: Mabel’s grip had become loose, unresponsive. Her warmth had faded, stolen by the cold stone, and Dipper could feel a tepid wetness spreading across his palm.

He had cracked open one eye, uttering his sister’s name in a query filled with hope, fear, prayer, and despair in equal measure. His eye could make out the form of his sister, lifeless, and her name echoed off of the pyramid walls again as the demon cackled and fled.

Dipper recalled little that followed; at some point he was pulled free by his friends and Grunkles after the demon had been banished, at some point he had been comforted with words and embraces, at some point he had returned home to yet more of the same from parents, classmates, relatives, strangers, and at some point he had been put back on a bus to Oregon, with the hopes that it might “help the healing process.” He could examine each of these memories like they were glass snowglobes, looking in but never truly _feeling_ anything but the chilling numbness he had felt in the pyramid. He spoke words, ate food, interacted to a minimum level, but it felt cold, mechanical, and insignificant.

It was only after a few days back in Gravity Falls, after the empty words and touches and looks of pity had passed, that he felt a spark of his old self. A yearling tree, marked by the base of the roots with a stone that had been carved with an unearthly-powerful laser pistol to engrave a shooting star, two initials, and a date.

Dipper had leaned against the tree, and a wisp of a memory surfaced:

_It had been the third day after he had found Ford’s third journal. Dipper had already skimmed it and realized the grave importance within, but had now focused on reading it from cover to cover. One section he had lingered on was “Incantations moft Black and Foul,” described as being “for perfons and purpofes profane and forbidden.” Between the spell for “Razor Winds” and “Sickness, Inflict Mass,” there had been a single page devoted entirely to one ritual:_

_Resurrection._

Dipper had once stolen into Stan’s study, mere days before Bill had emerged and come into his true power, and had found a sheaf of copied papers. The journals were but ash now, long scattered to the winds, but a copy might yet exist.

He forced himself to remain calm, his heart beginning to race as he took a long breath to steady himself. He couldn’t help but shoot a glance back towards the Shack. Soos’ voice could be heard, enthusiastic but indistinct through the trees; if there was one thing Dipper could rely on, it would be that Soos would never have destroyed or discarded any of Stan’s possessions. In fact, Dipper wasn’t even sure if the new owner of the Mystery Shack had ever even explored the office of the previous owner in the first place.

The thunder crashed again, and this time Dipper merely flinched so hard it was more of a shudder. That had been almost a week ago, but the one pilfered page sitting in a locked fishing tacklebox in the lowest level of the basement stood silent testament to his success. There had been warnings, to be sure, but Dipper had ignored the ones he could read and didn’t waste the time to decode the ones he couldn’t. Once, maybe, he would have happily spent an entire evening or two poring over cyphers and diagrams to wring every secret Ford had imbued into his journals, but he couldn’t afford to now.

Not when he was so close.

Soos had seemed curious when Dipper had gone up on the roof with part of the totem pole’s broken aerial. He had seemed to be content to leave Dipper well enough alone, and Melody had stayed even farther away: she seemed to want to help just as much, but Dipper could tell that something in the way he carried himself now made her uncomfortable. He didn’t care, didn’t bother to leave a platonic smile in place of his seemingly-permanent glower, didn’t look up or engage when asked about pointless drivel like the weather or sports teams, and generally had no time or patience for any attempts at probing into his feelings.

After a few days they had stopped trying, and now they steered clear of him as he bolted the aerial to the side of one of the roof peaks, and dropped a thick coil of rubber-insulated copper cable into the shattered stump of the totem pole. He finished making the necessary purchases and arrangements down in the basement below, clearing the remains of the portal as best as he could to make room for the circle he inscribed with salt and chalk and blood.

The most vital part of the whole affair was the hardest to procure. Dipper had to poke through Ford’s discarded inventions after a second check of the copies of the journals yielded little, until he found an old digestion notebook nestled between some crystal pyramids, with a promising title scrawled across the front:

_Same-Plane Portals, Experiments #1-_

The second number in the range had never been filled in, and the book was only half-full, but the latter few diagrams matched some of the intact hardware he had seen in the lockers and corners of the portal control room and cavern. The figures written alongside seemed to be promising, and when Dipper was able to fix some broken wiring and get a blue glowing pool to appear within the perimeter of the devices, he almost leapt with joy. The surge of hope and relief in his breast was more than he had felt for months, and a bit of ginger probing with a plank of wood returned seawater soaking the dry plank.

 _Time to dial it in_. The red numerals on the side corresponded to the raw geographical coordinates of the portal’s exit, and Dipper carefully punched in the digits.

_37°50'05.3" N_

_122°14'13.6" W_

He shivered as the pool rippled and stilled again. In a single lurch, he strode through, a long bundle under one arm as he stepped into the darkness of the cool California air. Glancing nervously at the distant lights, Dipper steeled himself. He retraced his steps to the same humble headstone he had visited on the 13th each month, every month, for the entirety of this first wretched year so far.

 _For you, Mabes_ , he thought with a smile. Then Dipper began to dig.

The fruits of his labor lay far below him, wrapped in a canvas tarp, the musty worm-ridden dirt threatening to muss up his careful inscriptions. Dipper sat on his back, listening as another clap of thunder pealed and rattled the windows. His weather app on his phone had predicted the storm, but also indicated the bulk of it was nearly past. If he wanted to still rely on the energy of the storm, he would need to act swiftly.

Quickly slipping on his shoes and giving Waddles one last rub, Dipper stole out of the attic bedroom. Soos had cleared the storage bins to the side, but Dipper’s bed was uncomfortably unadorned: gone was the picture of the sailing ship Stan claimed to have once owned after winning it off the owner in a hand of poker. Gone was the writing desk, where so much studying had been done in the name of cryptozoology and science. Gone was the other bed, and the strange and unfamiliar asymmetry seemed to strike him the hardest.

Instead, in all their places were boring boxes of cardboard and plastic, containing the hopes of an independent house to come and the ability to expand to fill that home, like a hermit crab moving into a larger shell. For now, they all merely urged Dipper to complete his task, to bring away the edge of unfamiliarity and loneliness.

He ducked downstairs, past Stan’s bedroom and the twin underlying rumbles of his hosts’ thunderous snoring within. The code was punched into the vending machine, and a rusted joint protested briefly before he was at the elevator, watching as the cold glow of the lights in the control room speckled across his face.

Dipper pulled the elevator door aside, and strode over to the panels. With a few pressed buttons and pulled switches, a lone spotlight illuminated the floor; Dipper breathed a sigh of relief that no settling soil or underground rodent had disturbed a single line of the sigil. Still, he performed a quick perimeter check, ensuring all of the items were in their proper places, that the lines were crisp and neat, and above all, avoiding looking at the still and too-small bundle at the center of it all.

Another rumble of true thunder outside reminded him of the urgency needed, and Dipper sat, opening the tackle box and removing the spell. Crossing his legs, he cleared his throat, and began to incant slowly.

_Dsvm lmv wivznh lu wzbh gszg xzmmlg ivgfim,_  
_Dsvm lmv'h slkvh zmw olevh zmw qlbh zoo yfim,_  
_Dsvm Wvzgs'h ozhg yfiwvm xzmmlg yv ylimv,  
_ _Z oruv xzm yv ivgfimvw._

_Yfg ivnvnyvi dvoo gszg oruv zmw yivzgs,_  
_Ziv mlg gsv nvzhfiv lu olev'h dvzogs,_  
_Nvnlirvh ziv yvggvi gszm uzohv svzogs,  
_ _Blf szev gsfh yvvm dzimvw._

_Z hsvoo rh nzwv uiln uovhs tlmv xlow,_  
_Z nrmw rh klfivw uiln nvnlib'h nlow,_  
_Z yivzgs ivgfimh oruv gl gsv ulow,  
_ _Yfg gsv hkrirg szh mld yvvm yfimvw._

There was a faint fizzle, a crackle of green-hued fire sparking around the perimeter, leaping from each of the humble piles the spell had specified: iron, lime, water, sulfur, arsenic, potash, gold, silver, lead, and phosphor. Ford’s notes on the spell had said that the final three ingredients were strangely abstract in the original spellbook he had transcribed, and he had indicated that the test of the spell on a stillborn fawn had seemed to be successful enough.

Dipper couldn’t afford to be picky, but even then the green racers of light and heat were starting to fade, and Dipper could feel a breath of despair escape him as they threatened to fade out.

Then the cavern shook as a blinding strobe of light flared down the disused periscope hole that lead to the totem pole. At the same time, an almighty roar of thunder like the screaming of an enraged god threatened to deafen Dipper, drowning out all sensation of noise in one heartbeat and leaving a howling silence in the next.

He could feel the hairs on the back of his arm prickle from the insulated cable lying a few feet away, and a moment later the fading sparks of the incantation roared into a sheet of emerald fire. The components caught fire, boiling and burning and smoking merrily as streamers of smoke and ash and steam boiled upwards. Almost as soon as they reached the ceiling of the cavern, they curved inwards, towards the tarp-covered form at the center. The tarp ripped away, as if by a galeforce wind, and Dipper quickly averted his eyes from the greyed, tiny misshapen form beneath.

Soon, however, the clouds had mingled and obscured it from sight. The roaring in Dipper’s ears from the thunder had been replaced by the hiss of flame, and a sickly green glow shone from the center of the cloud. A form was backlit by it, and Dipper could feel his mouth drop in shock as the outline of first one limb, then another lengthened from the trauma-shortened stumps to their full length, and the form of her head filled out to a healthy roundness from the caved-in ruin it had been.

The ingredients consumed, the clouds began to thin, and Dipper could see them being drawn into patches of pale flesh that pinkened even as he watched. He felt his vision blur as he caught a glimpse of her face: it was as he remembered, looking like she was barely sleeping rather than being dead and gone from the world for an epoch. Then the clouds faded, and her nude form drifted almost gracefully to lay on her back, still and unmoving.

Dipper started to take a step forward, then stopped, remembering the circle. Still, his eyes swept over her immobile form with increasing alarm as she failed to take breath.

_What did I do wrong, why didn’t it fully work, oh God did I just do nothing more than heal a corpse-_

_“GHAAAH!”_ she screamed, taking in a long and shuddering breath.

Dipper let out an incoherent shout of joy and raced to his sister, almost tackling her down as she strived to sit up in the middle of the spent ritual circle. Mabel’s head turned to her brother, giving him a smile that he returned with tears cleaning streaks over his grime-stained cheeks.

“Hiya bro-bro. What’d I miss?”


	2. Inseparable, Part Two

“Hiya bro-bro. What’d I miss?”

Mabel had given him her brace-filled grin, then shivered in the cool damp of the cavern. The green fire that has surrounded her had faded, and with it the surge of supernatural warmth had fled as well. Dipper quickly pulled off his vest, offering it to his sister as she shrugged it over her bare form.

His vision was blurred, but it was still her. The same smile, same chestnut locks, same dimples, and same voice. It was beyond belief, impossible even, but he and his sister had seen countless impossible things last summer: Dipper’s faith in the unknown had been nothing if not strengthened, and now kneeling before him was a miracle made flesh.

She was back.

He reached out to cup her face, but had to bite back a grimace of frustration as his hand shivered violently upon contact. He thought it was nerves, and although he could feel the warmth beneath the pad of his thumb as he rubbed it under her chin, it was also unexpectedly cool, as if the surface of her skin was ice that mingled with the heat of her vitality beneath. He forced his arm to settle, the sensation growing as familiar as he could remember as her twinkling eyes met his.

“Dip. Dipper, I…I was alone.” She grew quiet for a moment, and her lip pouted at the edge of a quaver before she drew a slow, careful breath. “I…did I…die?”

He tried looking everywhere but at her questioning face, but finally forced himself to meet her gaze and nodded. She shivered, and scooched an inch towards her brother across the dirt of the cavern floor. He could see her lift her head, her gaze sweeping across the smudged and ruined edges of the ritual circle she had been reborn within.

“You…wow, Dip, did you cast a spell or something?” Her voice grew playful, tinged with an edge of admiration. “A little high-power hocus-pocus?” She giggled, and the infectious sound caused Dipper to chuckle as well.

“Something like that.” No reason to cause her to worry over a little grave desecration; at this point it was moot, and simply a sad patch of dirt rather than her final resting place.

She grinned, and leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. It lingered, the warmth of her breath causing the hairs on his neck to stand erect, and he Sighed with both happiness and disappointment as she withdrew.

It was then, as they looked into each-other’s eyes, joy and relief filling his heart, that Soos’ voice echoed down the elevator shaft.

“Uh, dood? I, uh, I dunno if you’re down here or what, but, uh, Mister. Stan and his bro are back!”

Dipper groaned, but slowly got to his feet, offering Mabel a hand up. She took it, her grip like iron despite the weakness he had anticipated from her resurrection. He had known his Grunkles were coming back, but this was a day or two early. Likely they had meant to surprise him, to try and take his mind off his moping, but Dipper again felt like he was looking into a snowglobe of how others expected him to feel.

Instead, he felt lighter than air, suffused by a relief and laughter within his chest that he hadn’t felt since before he lost her. They expected him to be despairing when he felt like _this?_ Dipper didn’t know if he could hide the newfound elation he felt at feeling his sister’s hand in his, or if he even cared to in the first place.

“C’mon, Mabes. Let’s get you a change of clothes.” He guided her to the elevator, to Ford’s study where Dipper knew they had left an emergency supplies stash for Weirdmageddon. Sure enough, the cache remained, and while musty the clothes still fit just fine. Mabel did a little twirl, restored to her favorite style of skirt and a white sweater with grey striping on the sleeves. The futuristic font on the front spelled out _Lincoln Six Echo_ , some boy band she probably had obsessed over that had mingled with the countless others.

Clenching her hand as tightly as he dared, they rode the elevator to the top, and approached the back of the cracked-open vending machine doorway. Stan’s belly laughter could be heard, followed belatedly by some sort of lecturing tone from Ford. There was something Soos and Melody said, and the mingled laughter of their Grunkles came a moment later.

Dipper reached the door, pushing it open a foot. Melody and Soos had their backs to the shop, but Ford immediately noticed the movement and caught Dipper’s eye.

Then his gaze shifted to directly behind Dipper, and he froze.

Melody must have noticed, because she went to follow his gaze when Ford barked out an order, loud and harsh with the expectation and implied threat that it be followed immediately and without fail.

“Eyes on me- _eyes on me_ **NOW!”** Melody’s head snapped back to face him, and Soos did as well. Face still straight ahead, Dipper could see him whisper something to his girlfriend out the side of his mouth, and she muttered something back. Soos shrugged, and Dipper could see Stan come in from the hallway.

Then he caught sight of the twins, and with barely any delay had already resumed his smooth-talking conman air as Ford just stood and stared, a vein bulging slightly on his forehead.

“All right, kiddos, special treat on us: a week of vacation, pro bono! We’ll cover the shop and all, so no reason to drag your feet, eh?” He had already maneuvered behind the couple, and with a forceful hand on their shoulders he was marching them to the front door.

Dipper could hear a faint “But what about some luggage, Mr. Pines?” Stan casually dismissed it with a wave, managing to keep the waving hand applying steady forward force as he did, and said “Ah the heck with it, kid. Luggage is overrated; here, treat yourself to some new duds and go have fun and whatever.”

A crumpled fistful of bills was crammed into Soos’ coat pocket, but Dipper could see his pace slow in confusion. Stan was never the type to give away money, and instead usually the smallest pittance had to be obtained through hook, crook, or a reliably tough set of pliers.

Soos started to turn, muttering “Mister Pines, are you ok? Something just seems not right about this whole-”

The pictures on the wall shuddered as Stan’s arm slammed against the doorframe. He was in a pose of casually leaning against the now-cracked wood, but the congenial tone in his voice held an edge of violence.

“Scram, kids.” There was a pause as he met Dipper’s stare, his expression unreadable. “Trust me on this.”

He pulled the door shut behind the turned back of his former assistant, and had crossed the living room to stand next to his brother a moment later. Stan made a motion to move towards them, but Ford held out a hand and shook his head.

Instead, Stanford turned to Dipper, his voice carefully level.

“Dip, I need you to tell me _exactly_ what you did.”

A rushed explanation, given haste by excitement, pride, and guilt, proceeded to tumble out and fill the dusty air of the souvenir shop. Stan watched with dull suspicion, his eyes darting from Dipper, to his revived sister, to his brother, and back, as if he was a predator assessing an ambushed deer.

Ford, however, had none of the same poker face. His expression shifted only a little, but Dipper had studied his every move and expression at every opportunity after he had arrived last summer. To him, Ford’s shock, horror, and something akin to fury passed by in equal measure. The first two Dipper had expected, but not the third.

As he mentioned the lightning, the last rumble of the passing storm buzzed the windowpanes, and Ford broke the silence.

Dipper was surprised when he didn’t address him.

“Stan, knife.”

In quick succession there was a thump as Stan’s heavy seaboot thumped up onto a stool and in the same motion a sliver of silver flashed out from his hand, in a lazy arc to Ford.

He caught it without hesitation, the blade almost appearing in his hand as Stan pulled his pant leg back down. Dipper could see engravings along the bone handle, but most of all his mind was focused on how Ford was striding over to Mabel, who took a worried step backwards.

Ford’s hand shot out, gripping Mabel as he said in a terse voice “I just need to check something.”

The knife flashed, and Dipper’s breath caught in his throat, but then there was another flicker as the blade was returned to Stan, and Mabel just let out an indignant “Ow.”

Peering around his Grunkle’s back, Dipper could see Ford had made a half-inch cut along the side of one of her fingers. He was squeezing it carefully, and Dipper could hear him murmuring “ _c’mon, don’t be green, don’t be green._ ”

Instead, nothing emerged. The cut was deep enough to see the redness below, but not so much as a single drop of blood welled forth. Ford let go of her hand, taking a long and contemplative breath as Mabel glowered and stuck the wounded digit in her mouth for a moment before pulling it out to look at it.

“Well, she’s not the shapeshifter at least,” Ford said, and then snorted through his nose. “‘Course, something else is wrong that I don’t think you accounted for, Dipper.”

Stan’s voice cut in unexpectedly. “She’s undead, kid. No pulse, no life. Not really.” His voice was thick as he asked pleadingly “Dipper, did you even _read_ the warnings?”

Dipper’s suspicions, already curling around his gut despite his fleeting optimism attempting to tamp them down, flared to the forefront.

_The icy skin. The revulsion to touch. The quietness._

The last one caught him off-guard, but even his subconscious had noticed that his sister had said barely a dozen words since she had risen. That certainly wasn’t like Mabel, as the moment an opening in a conversation appeared, she had an almost-biological inability to do anything other than fill the waiting void.

Dipper could feel Stan’s questioning, pleading look on him, and he shook his head, letting out a squeaked “ _no._ ” His Grunkle cleared his throat, saying in a bit clearer voice “Yeah, well, I figured as much. There’s a reason I know what the warnings say.”

Ford’s head shot up at this; with Dipper forgotten for a passing moment, his voice was equal parts hurt and confusion. “Stanley, whatever do you mean? You saw me pulled through, body and spirit and all. A resurrection spell wouldn’t have had anything to work with, and would have just-”

Now it was Stan’s turn to turn towards his brother, a single finger waving warningly. “Stanford, you numbskull, it was _Twenty. Damn. Years._ You had gone through a portal, to only god knows where in the multiverse. Sure, I was able to find where you had disappeared to, but how was I supposed to know I was going to get anything back through than a half-eaten corpse, a charred skeleton, a mangled-”

He cut off with a glance towards the younger twins, sighing as the frustration drained out of his posture. “I’m just saying, I wanted to cover the eventualities.” Ford nodded, but turned to give a worried look towards Mabel. Stan grunted with affirmation.

“And let me tell you, that’s not an eventuality I wanted.”

Dipper’s voice was unsteady, and he felt like the ground was collapsing beneath him as he gripped Mabel’s hand. “W-what do you mean?” She returned the grip, but it was too strong, and the chill was giving his entire arm goosebumps.

Ford’s voice was kind, reassuring, but carrying a weight of sadness Dipper had rarely heard from him. “Dipper, have-have you tried talking with her-with Mabel for any length?”

Blinking away tears, Dipper shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know? We talked when she first came back, said she thought she had died, that she had-”

He cut off what he was saying as he noticed Stan had returned from where he had stepped out to rummage through a hall closet. He had a set of items in his hands, and Dipper’s breath caught as he saw them.

It was a ball of pink yarn, and a pair of knitting needles.

He recognized them from last summer, and now more than ever Dipper wanted to smack them out of Grunkle Stan’s grip, scatter them across the floor and let them be forgotten.

Instead, he felt a mounting feeling of dread as Mabel cautiously took the yarn and needles. She turned them over in her hands, and Dipper could feel his remaining willpower shatter as he heard her voice crack.

“I…I don’t know how to do this.”

Dipper’s head shot up towards Ford as he had a sudden thought. “Maybe she just needs time to-” before Stan stepped to interject.

“Dipper, the warnings, the damn _warnings_ said what this is: these aren’t her memories.”

“They’re yours.”

Dipper turned to look at Ford, as he sighed and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “B-but the fawn?” he said, hoping his Grunkle might have possibly, hopefully, impossibly been wrong about this.

Ford coughed, rubbing his hand on his neck. “Well, you see, the fawn lived, but it had my memories of it’s…fawn-ness.” Dipper cocked his head, not understanding, and trying to not look at his sister’s futile attempts to fumble a line of yarn out between two needles and form anything but an ugly knot.

_She always made it look so easy…_

Ford took a breath and began again. “Dipper, I’m an extradimensional physicist, not a _biologist._ It thought the Shack was its home; I didn’t know where its den was!” His voice rose, a tinge of defiance against the guilt beginning to color the story. “I shooed it away time and again, but each time it returned, weaker than the next. I had never raised a deer, didn’t know the first thing about feeding it.”

His eyes rose to meet his nephew’s. “After the fact, a baby mammal drinking milk had made sense, but at the time of the ritual I had never given it that much thought. I had assumed they ate grass and leaves and greenery. I had always assumed that…”

He trailed off, and Dipper looked over at his sister as tears of frustration fell on the discarded heap of yarn and needles. _I had always assumed that I’d never need to pay attention to a detail like that._

Ford’s gaze dropped as Stan put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I did my best to feed it once I realized it wasn’t going away, but it wouldn’t take to being bottle-fed. Out of desperation I tried using leaves of a head of lettuce; it ate them, but nutritionally it was useless to a week-old fawn.” He took another long pause. “She died after a few days short of two weeks after I raised her.”

He met Dipper’s horrified gaze. “I don’t think Mabel’s going to starve, but the same problem persists. She’s formed from your memories, not hers.”

Dipper began to shake his head, a fervent hope that disbelief could resolve the crisis and set everything right and just the way he had hoped for if he just shut out all else and-

He was shocked from his mantra as Grunkle Stan gripped him by the shoulders and shook him. “Damn it, Dipper, look at me. Look at this.”

He turned towards Mabel, tears still glittering on her rosy cheeks as Stan’s hand kept Dipper’s shoulder in a vice grip. “Mabel, sweetie, what’s your favorite boy band?”

She chuckled, and gave them finger guns. “Man, Sev’ral Timez; what else?” A moment later she gave him a playful glare and muttered “I still can’t believe you wouldn’t let me keep one of them.”

Stan shook his head. “They’d make a helluva mess on the carpet, and besides I-” He stopped, shook his head with a sigh, and then said “Okay then, kiddo, what’s your _second-_ favorite boy band?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

Again, Dipper wracked his mind for any time she had told him the name of a band she liked, but they all flowed together in a stream of frosted tips, crooning, and snapped fingers. Sev’ral Timez had only stood out thanks to their escapades in rounding up the feral cloned escapees, but the rest?

It was a blank.

His point had been made, but Stan continued. “Okay then, next question: what’s your favorite candy?”

Mabel had been eyeing both him and Dipper with a hurt look of suspicion, but at this she perked back up. “Duh. Smile Dip!”

Ford started, and in a questioning tone he started to say “Wait, wasn’t that banned in the-” before his brother cut him off.

“So what flavor is Smile Dip?”

Ford opened his mouth again, but then shut it and waited. There was another agonizing pause, and in a questioning tone Mabel just said “…Pink Glitter?”

Stan just let out a snort through his nose and looked to Dipper. “I get the picture,” he said to his Grunkle. “Please; no more.”

Stan nodded and took a respectful step back as Dipper stepped over to hug Mabel. There was a long pause, disturbed only by another rumble of thunder from the distance. Then Ford broke the silence.

“There…may be another possibility.” He leaned forward and murmured in Dipper’s ear, before leaning back. He glanced at Stan, who was clearly curious but decided save the questions for later; the glance held a sad memory, and then it was passively neutral once more.

“Did you need me to bring anything from upstairs? Old notebooks, personal effects, that sort of thing?”

Dipper’s mind was racing, but kept looping around to a single, blazing outcome.

“No,” he said, and summoned the effort for a smile. Then hugging Mabel into another embrace, he led her by the hand back towards the hidden elevator.

Before he clicked shut the vending machine, Dipper managed to draw on the effort for another reassuring smile, and said “Thank you.”

Then the door was shut, the emergency lights leading the way as they returned to Ford’s abandoned study. Dipper made his way to the desk his Grunkle had mentioned, pushed the cap of the one golden pen in a cup full of black ballpoints into a specific knothole on the side, and caught the velvet-wrapped item that slipped out from a panel as it slid backwards.

Mabel had taken a seat on one of the old swivel chairs, and was nervously bouncing her knee up and down. Carefully, Dipper unwrapped the velvet, revealing a dusty but intact memory gun.

 _“You could try again,_ ” Ford had whispered into his ear. _“Try to set it right, get every memory you can into there, as best as you can remember,_ focusing _this time so you don’t leave anything out.”_

Dipper had nodded, but his own memory screamed at him about the foolishness proposed.

_I can’t knit, or purl, or even sew, let alone make another one of her sweaters like I remember. I can’t cook, and could probably burn a salad let along make her amazing sugar cookies we had the Christmas before last. I can’t laugh like she can, let alone replicate her sense of humor and make the entire classroom laugh like we did in fourth grade Geography that fall. I can’t love like she could, the love she had for random strangers and animals and pets like Waddles or Gomper, the ability to walk into a room and have a dozen new penpals by the time she walked out. I just can’t bring that back._

“Dipper?” Her voice was worried at his silence, but he just patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and kissed the top of her head.

“No worries Mabes. Everything’s gonna get fixed here in a second.”

He could see her shoulders slump slightly as he gently clicked the oiled dial to _> ALL<._

“Hey, Mabel?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you like best about me?”

She giggled a little as he pulled off a post-it note from the stack by the pen cup, and scrawled a note on it before adhering it to the side of the gun.

“Well, I like that you’re smart, that you’re good at puzzles and decrypting codes, that you totally do not sneeze like a kitten, and…”

The pause lasted for a long while, and Dipper gently prompted her. “And?”

“And you love your sister more than anything else in the world, and she loves you back just as much.” She giggled. “How was that?”

Dipper smiled, blinking away the tears as he charged up the memory gun. “That was great. J-just…just focus on those memories, all right?”

She nodded. Dipper grinned through his tears, raising up the memory gun to read the writing on the side:

_Destroy this gun before anyone can stop you._

Then he raised the glowing bulb to his temple, and the world went white.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @noneatnonedotcom: for angstmas mabel dies in an acident dipper is unwilling to let her go and after a year of trying sucsessfuly brings her back. mabel is quite literaly alive again dipper wouldn’t settle for less but the rest of the pines family and gravity falls at large belive he’s lost his mind and the mabel he’s brought back is nothing more then a corpse animated by magic. can the twins survive the hatred of the people they love?


	3. Bifurcation

The silhouetted figures embrace, a hug of reassurance and solidarity. A few quiet words exchanged, a shoulder squeezed and a kiss given upon a brown-curled brow. One chuckles, echoed shortly after by the other, and tears of uncertainty are dried with a careful hand and the edge of a well-loved sweater sleeve. The pair separate, a few final words checking if aid is still needed before the one is left alone in the cramped, brightly-tiled bathroom.

She hunches over, a few tears falling before she steels herself. Words meant to fool her own spirit are muttered, barely loud enough that she could hear them herself. Then the cap is replaced on the pregnancy test after it is wrapped in a tissue and discarded.

The girl, the woman barely graduated from school, stands and rejoins her brother.

A season passes. The snow withdraws from its hold, the ground sprouts clear and green with the fresh smell of life and the calls of newborns in the trees and scattered patches of wilderness among encroaching suburbs.

A rickety pickup truck sits outside of a small health clinic. Within, the tests they can perform are rudimentary, but ominous. A doctor smiles, the expression carefully neutral to avoid giving the impression of the situation being either hopeless or a laughably trivial matter. A pamphlet is passed to a quietly shaking hand, a question asked in barely a whisper and the calm voice returns to answer.

The man behind her has a hand on her shoulder; gentle, there for reassurance and solidarity rather than control. The doctor has seen partners with whitened grips on captured limbs, smiles serving as a mask over sadism while the meaningless words floating between both parties play into the illusion that nothing is wrong. Calls were made afterwards, always, as much as her oath and the written and unwritten code of ethics she holds permits, but nothing is assured.

The similarity of faces is obvious, noted the moment she saw them. It is unremarked upon, a kindness in a trying time. The concerns outlined mentioned the unspoken transgression, in passing rather than emphasis but causing flinches of guilt regardless. The doctor keeps her smile the same without additional effort: their transgression is mild, a drop in an ocean and nothing compared to the buckets and waves of shattered lives she saw in the faces, bruises, scars, diagnostics, the chorus of tales skin and form could tell.

The pamphlet is exchanged, and thanks in much the same fashion follow a moment later, before the appointment concludes. Waiting in the empty room, the doctor closes her eyes and offers a brief message of hope for the couple who just left; it has never hurt to do so before, and so words are offered without reply for health and grace.

Another season crosses, the burst of life having passed and the heat of the midsummer baking moisture into humidity and passions into furies. Words had been exchanged the night before, bodies had slept in separate rooms as they had multiple days in the weeks before. Still, when a discomfort is felt, an excited shout is yelled, and another sleep is broken asunder, embraces and whispered words of excitement are passed as clothes are hurriedly donned.

The smell of antiseptic stings more than the fluorescent lights, and the bouts of pain press patience to and through the point of breaking. A plea is made, a vial is summoned, a syringe readied, and the partner speaks worries, his voice filled with figures and facts building blocks of an argument of a danger he has learned of through dead trees and dried ink. Her pain and fury scatter the argument aside, her eyes flashing with threats implied and spoken, and her peace is administered as a stifling silence saturates the room.

Hours pass, the moon’s flaring brilliance over their arrival having vanished, and an awakening comes thrice. FIrst in the form of a sound of pain and effort and the cries of new life experiencing existence, secondly in the form of the dawnlight lancing through the windows and purging shadows and slumber from all present, and lastly another cry, joining the first in protest and excitement and pain and joy.

The nurses and doctors and studied hands who aid and clean the infants and mother exchange glances, quiet murmurs, estimates, and pass them to the mother. A look of shock and fear and love as she embraces an infant to either bosom, a nurse assisting cleaning as milk spills out of cleft lips, a gentle hand stroking a head anxiously with a single finger as the remaining digits support the too-large skull.

The man remains quiet, learned patience overwhelming and silencing vindication, but the feeling remains: this was predicted, possible, and countless disagreements had just been ruled upon in a pair of tiny heartbeats.

The woman is silent as well; there is some cooing, murmurs, reassurances as unpracticed lips lose a teat and begin to sputter and cry, but there are also glances towards the other looming silence, towards figures she had dismissed and scenarios she had counted as little more than dark fantasies. Worse is the gnawing guilt, as she looks upon the two figures at her bosom and feels a flicker of what she has read, heard, anticipated feeling. She hugs the newborns close, but it a reassurance intended for her alone.

Another season passes, and then another. Leaves redden and fall, the air grows brisk, and drifts accumulate both inside and without. Stacks of gifts and well-wishes, cards and nappies and clothes and toys, counterbalance the piles of leaves in wind-teased heaps. Those stacks fade, replaced by drifts of snow scraped to clear paths in continual defiance of threatening skies, while the drifts within disperse and are replaced by the white and cruel black of letters, statements, invoices, payments.

The white growth within and without are equally gentle at first, before becoming suffocating heaps. A heap of white without leads to an argument, following a play date that yields damp and chills from insufficient protection from the elements; a heap of white within leads to another bout, words exchanged in matching crescendos until the cries of fear or hunger or both from the babes splits and freezes the discussion for a later muttered resolution that evening.

Afterwards, truths are realized, their clear necessity visible to both as plainly as the clear toxicity it will render upon their bond. Words are exchanged to clarify suspicions, to sharpen arguments in readiness, and to maintain the everyday facade they maintain for strangers and for each-other.

Within her eyes, he has seen separation. Her spark for him has faded, from exhaustion and frustration and the grinding wear of the needs on the body the infants have wrought; her mind is tired, her body is tired, and remaining in this place, in this function, is akin to becoming an automaton of flesh. Her creative spirit, her explorative mind, feels locked behind expectations she never asked for, never expected. She is tired, and seeking whatever release may come.

Within his eyes, she has seen frustration. His spark for her is a pale flicker compared to the inferno for their children; while mended in body, he carries and rarely speaks of his fears for the safety of their minds. Her dissociation weighs on him, and weighs on the youngling twins; his mind forms another fortress of preparations, of connections, building upon thousands of facts and figures from hundreds of sources and speakers as well as the memories of great-uncles left abused and broken by parental infighting. He is worried, and believes a barrier of separation will ensure the greatest stability for the most minds.

The juncture occurs, the flashpoint: the cause is forgettable, inconsequential, but nevertheless serves to ground thunderbolts that spill forth from their mouths, tears of sorrow and truthful release and unhindered rage mingling freely, two wailing forms forgotten and ignored as the storm rages on a cloudless winter evening. After long hours filled with flashes of white-hot fury and long rumbling silences of reflection and re-arming, the storm passes, taking with it a pair of bonded sparks.

Gradually the winter is broken, the snow melts away, the bills do the same, and an equilibrium is achieved. It is an armistice, as much spoken and calmly agreed upon in words as it is unwritten and known by both to be a temporary truce.

A final few arrangements are made, and the existence of the storm is cautiously released from the boundaries of their shared roof. Words pour in, forming support, forming factions, but it is a buzz that blends with other words; the factions are unneeded, their readiness to do battle in the name of their pledged liege appreciated but pointless.

An agreement is made, and meetings are had as the daffodils bloom. Quiet words are exchanged in rooms made of dark mahogany, the smell of age and of aging books filled with precedent complementing the neutral pleasantness of the adjudicator. A contract is made, the drafting made rare by the lack of rancor the lawyer’s chambers have seen all too often before.

The resemblance of the two is noted upon after some cross-referencing afterwards, some traipsing down open but dusty and disused routs into near-forgotten servers, filled with images, tales, and words exchanged publicly. It was all before a relationship bloomed, one that called for the utmost secrecy, but the puzzle pieces are easy enough to assemble and get a clear picture of the current result.

The lawyer makes no mention of this; it is for their own curiosity, informing the motivations of both parties, and nothing more.

A signature is made by both individuals, and an invisible thing is slain in doing so. The man takes the last load of belongings into a van, newly purchased and still a fresh reminder of what an invisible thing that was thought to be invulnerable.

Words are exchanged, quietly, and a hug and kiss upon a cheek. The infants, still restricted to crawling through the world, are taken to the van and placed within. Their cries of worry and confusion draw tears from their parents; explanations have been made to them of the arrangements, but it is an unclear thing in many ways to the parents even now.

An hour elapses, the sun shifts overhead, the afternoon cools from warm to the hint of a chill, and the equilibrium is established. Hands and feet explore a new apartment, one they have visited before only in brief, introductory trips. They will return to the home, but not before they stride across a living room unassisted on wobbling and uncertain steps. A single breath is taken in and released from the quiet and echoing home, and a feeling like a weight is removed as the silence falls.

Mirrored across dozens of miles, two forms slump back-to-back against a threshold door. A tear forms and falls from each for what was lost, and then breaths are taken in as each remembers the equilibrium and its reason for being.

As the new normality takes root below, two unseen and bonded sparks continue their dances above the trees and into the stars above.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from an Anon: Maybe this is on the side of too cruel, but you know how in most stories when they have a kid everything magically works out? Well…what if it didn’t? Would their relationship survive such a tragedy?


	4. A Friend In Need

Mabel sat back, head leaning against the wall above her dresser, tears trickling out as she took sobbing and ragged breaths.

 _Relieved. My apartment got busted into a few hours ago, and I’m relieved._ She snuffled, wiping a sweater sleeve across her face to remove some of the mess, smiling ruefully while alone in her bedroom. _Well, Derek flaked off like Mom always said he would, so I guess I should be glad I wasn’t home at the time._

She opened her clenched hand, revealing a cheap, fine chain in a silvered metal, attached to a sterling-plated pendant. The pendant was half a heart, broken in the middle in a distinct, ragged pattern, and she could make out the enameled half-message still visible on it:

 _ONE H-_  
TWO B-  
OUR -

 _“One heart, two bodies: our love,”_ she murmured to herself. The necklace was priceless; it was a vending-machine piece of cheap metal, worthless to any appraiser, and yet beyond all wealth to her now, at this time, at this place in her life.

Mabel smiled, a hand drifting to below her churning stomach, to the slight swelling below, the reason she hadn’t been home all afternoon. Then she took the necklace, undid the fiddly clasp, and tucking her hands under her thick brown curls she put on the necklace, letting the pendant fall under the edge of her shirt. The metal rested, chilled, against her bare skin for a moment before warming.

Taking a deep breath, she suddenly started when the police officer knocked on her open door.

“Sorry to startle you miss,” she said after her “ _Eep!”_ of alarm, before she continued. “It looks like the burglar’s trail is cold enough that there’s not more I can do tonight.” The cop held a thumb drive between her fingers. “Once I look over the security camera footage from the landlord, we’ll probably have some solid leads, but for now it would probably be safest if you locked up as best as you can tonight, and stayed with a friend or relative. The lock should be back in place and stronger than ever, but we still advise prudence for the first few days following a breaking-and-entering like this.”

She noticed the open jewelry case, a few of the drawers lying where the thief had thrown them still scattered on the dresser and bed, and nodded towards them. “Uh, anything else to add beyond the jewelry losses we’d already recorded?”

Mabel looked towards the floor for a second, her breath hitching despite feeling the edge of a smile, the hint of warm relief as she shifted and felt the warm metal sitting on her chest.

It carried with it a sudden weight of guilt and memories afterwards, of quiet discussions, quiet arguments they’d had. _Mabes, honey, there’s a reason we broke up. Teenagers and relationships, that’s bad enough, but teenagers in relationships with their siblings? That was asking for all kinds of trouble, and the Grunkles had started to get suspicious, and Candy and Grenda had started to ask questions, and it felt like everyone_ knew, _somehow._

_The necklace was supposed to be the end of it, and endpoint. “Remember what we had, love what we lost, but accept it and move on,” like that pastor had said at Great-Gramps’ funeral. A memory of what we had, not a promise. He’s your brother, and he’s the logical one, remember? DIpper probably made a risk-assessment flowchart a few weeks after that summer and threw out the necklace to “minimize risk,” or some nonsense._

She sighed. _Well, at the very least I know he’ll let me in for the night, until I can get this stuff sorted and get back on my feet. I do wish-_

“Miss? Ma’am?”

The officer’s questions snapped her out of the contemplation Mabel was having, and she shook her head.

“No, everything else is safe.” She met the police officer’s gaze. “And I think I have someone I can call.”

 

* * *

 

“Oh my god, Mabes, of course! Please, come in, come in.”

Dipper waved off the Lyber driver that had dropped off Mabel, and grabbed her backpack, ushering her into his condo before shutting the door behind both of them.

No sooner had he done so than Mabel felt him grip her in a bear hug. Puberty had given his noodle arms a bit of a much-needed boost, and she whoofed out a breath from the force of his worry as he held her.

“I’m just glad you’re safe. Do you think Derek or one of his scuzzball friends might have-”

Mabel felt a tinge of emotion, more backwash from the breakup last weekend than anything else, and her throat closed up as she waved a hand with more force than intended. “I-I don’t think so, but I’d rather-I’d rather not focus on that Dipper. Please-”

He just nodded. Her brother had taken on the occasional part-time private investigator job, and while he was apparently quite successful, she appreciated that he kept the questions doubtlessly boiling within to himself. The looming unspoken question burned through her aloofness, and Mabel quietly stated “Dipper, Derek and I found out I was-I am, pregnant.”

His eyes widened, as he sat back slightly, a hand coming up to run along the edge of his beard as she recognized his thinking face. Then just as quickly it dropped, and with a deep intake of breath, he just said quietly “When did you find out?”

She gave him a slightly-annoyed look and snorted. “Well, I missed my period last weekend, and Derek knew that I knew that he’d cheated on me last spring, so I guess he didn’t want to try and own up any more than he had already.” She dropped her glare from Dipper as his face fell, realizing that she had been accidentally directing her anger at her ex-boyfriend towards her brother.

“Uh, I had an exam this afternoon since the pregnancy test had been a negative. Turns out it was one of the rare false negatives.” She raised her fingers in little sarcastic celebratory circles. “Woo, good luck strikes in threes, huh?”

She laughed, and Dipper chuckled along with her. Then his face went back to the sad neutral from before as he asked “So, um, what-what was taken? Do you know yet?”

She sighed, and shook her head a little. “The officer that came over was super-helpful in tallying everything I could remember, but they scattered my jewelry drawer across the bedroom, so I need to check it with a fine-tooth comb to know exactly what’s missing. There’s not much left, but-”

She paused as she fished the pendant out from under her shirt, dangling it to show her brother “-at least they didn’t take the important stuff.”

She was surprised to see Dipper’s face flush, his eyes suddenly going moist, but then he reached to pull an identical half from his shirt. His pendant was worn, the chain replaced by something more substantial, a true sterling silver in a wide, flat pattern. The pendant had been well worn, the silver finish worn away to reveal the ruddy copper beneath, but the black enamel still making his half of the message clearly visible.

 _-EART,_  
-ODIES:  
-LOVE.

Mabel felt tears well up for the countless time that day, and Dipper just came to sat next to her, She pulled him into a hug with a muffled “C’mere, you big dork,” and they both chuckled and held each other close. After a bit, Mabel could feel her breathing slow, and sat back to look at Dipper.

Her brother returned her look, one of unspoken questions bottled up for almost a decade. His hand gently reached out, paused a second while almost touching her face. She didn’t flinch, and he connected, the crook of his finger running along her cheekbone, his eyes studying her as if discovering his sister all over again.

Dipper’s eyes met hers, then dropped searching aimlessly while the nervous half-smile returned.

“Mabes, do-do you remember, back the summer we turned fifteen? When I-uh, you-um…”

He stammered off into silence, but she smiled, reaching over to put her hand on his anxiously-twiddling thumbs, giving his hand a squeeze.

“How could I forget? Dip, that was the best summer ever. Heck, that’s the only summer at the Shack that I ended up making two scrapbooks: the one on the shelf at home, and-”

Dipper chuckled. “-and the one taped into the false bottom under your bedframe in the attic. How could I forget?” He smiled, looking deep into Mabel’s eyes. “You know, for the record, I liked that scrapbook best.”

She grinned and then nodded solemnly. “Me too.”

His hand squeezed hers as he spoke again. “Mabel, while I think we did the best thing for us at the time in ending it-” She started to pull her hand slightly away, feeling like her heart had abruptly stepped to the edge of a teetering cliff. Dipper’s voice cracked, and he held her hand with a gentle, firm strength.

“Mabes, I’ve never forgotten. Ever. And, I-I-I, uh, I was wondering if you, uh-”

His stammering steadied, and he looked her in the face as her smile began to brighten, racing ahead to predict what he was asking, “-if you wanted to try again? I mean, if you still-”

The rest of his ramble was cut off as she pulled him close with a hand pulling his shirt over to her. She met his mouth with a kiss, and after a moment of shock he responded in kind, making a happy hum that she echoed and soon devolved into mutual giggles.

Fighting off the last edge of the giggle, Mabel patted his shoulder from where her arm was sitting around it.

“That answer your question, brobro?”

He smiled, his eyes twinkling and his voice thick as he choked out “Yeah, Mabes. Man, I’d always worried I was being obsessive, that I was-”

“-always remembering that first kiss under the hollow cedar tree, remembering the time we made each-other rings from the Gobblewonker cogs, the time we used that time-tape you photocopied from the picture you took of Blendin, and we got to make Soos eat the same popsicle for like an entire week?”

He leaned back, a snicker turning into a full-on belly laugh. “Oh, and he kept saying how weird it was that we only had blueberry ones, with the same firefighter ghost joke on the stick!” Dipper wiped a tear from his eye. “You know, I think by about the second day Ford was onto us, but by the third day I think both he and Melody had noticed, but were curious just how long it would take Soos to realize as well.”

She snickered at the end of her laughter as well. “It was too bad Waddles got into the box of them and caused that minor paradox, or else I think we could have kept that up for at least another month.”

Mabel gave her brother a grin, and then leaned forward. He responded in kind, and they gently kissed again; she noticed and enjoyed the taste of his lips on hers, and she noticed him smile in appreciation as she felt his tongue notice the taste on her own lips.

“Mmm,” he said as they broke the kiss. “Is that-”

She grinned at her twin. “Vanilla-strawberry? I remembered it was someone’s favorite!” Her smile became a bit embarrassed with self-consciousness as she murmured “I might have saved a stick of that along with the necklace, just in case we ever, uh…”

He ducked his hand under her chin, gently cupping her cheek and giving his sister a smile. “Well, I’m glad we did.”

He pulled his sister into a hug, and she felt her heart race faster than it had in nearly a decade.

_I hope this was the right choice._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to @mrdaxxonford for the prompt: Okay, so its a few years after Dipper and Mabel had broken up, (mutual thing) and Mabel finds out she is pregnant. The father isn’t in the picture so Dipper kindov steps in to help. Mabel says its a bad idea, but i think maybe they find out those feelings are still there.


	5. No Place Like Home

_“_ Mabel, is that what I think it is?”

Dipper was staring at the blue woolen object protruding from one end of Mabel’s backpack. They had already unpacked most of the souvenirs they’d collected this summer from Gravity Falls and the surrounding woods, but Dipper suddenly realized that Mabel had been acting awfully careful and antsy around him when unloading her own pack.

It was a Wednesday evening, and they had already finished their chores for the day. Unpacking had been low on the priority list compared to finishing off the assigned summer reading, meeting with visiting friends and family, and catching up on the _Ducktective_ reboot series.

A bit of reluctant shuffling later, and Dipper was sitting, jaw hanging open, as his sister laid out the remaining “souvenirs” she had collected: the size-altering flashlight, its crystal still twinkling even in the dim lights; a tape measure with a triangular infinity symbol on it, humming with what Dipper had long-theorized to be a miniaturized fusion power cell; and a roughly three-foot-square rug, cut and slightly uneven on two edges, but still crackling with static power as she revealed it.

Altogether, Mabel had collected what were probably the only three separate, man-portable devices they had come across in their adventures that could rewrite the laws of reality in not-insignificant ways.

A brief thought passed by about what could have happened had they reacted while being crammed together and jostled through the long bus ride home. He whimpered softly, and then forced himself to take a calming breath.

“We need to take it back.” Mabel gave him a shocked look, trying to summon offence at his statement but merely getting partway there and instead looking angry and guilty all at once.

“What, take it back?” She gestured at the collected items. “Dip, these are like some of the coolest stuff we found all summer that first year! What, you don’t want to have some fun with them at home?”

She grinned. “Like, you could try that shrinking chair trick on Mom and Dad’s dining room set, like you were showing me you’d read about, only this time you don’t have to be a master carpenter to reduce the size by ten percent each day.”

Dipper nodded, rubbing the sparse stubble on his chin while his interior thoughts tried to avoid letting him cackle aloud. Still, Mabel could see the tiny shift in expression, and she smiled.

“Or we could use the time-tape to go on a vacation; spend a week strolling the beaches of a pre-civilization Oakland shoreline, and get back before five minutes have passed with no-one the wiser.”

He nodded again, this time with even more enthusiasm. High school wasn’t hard, per say, but it was draining and a lazy and relaxing getaway seemed like a godsend to catch up on his much-missed sleep.

“And the rug?” He looked towards it, and Mabel’s voice became slightly quieter.

“I, uh, was thinking maybe we could try a day in each-other’s shoes?

Dipper couldn’t place the odd note in her voice, but just nodded carefully. “Uh, ok, but didn’t you say you’d been having a really rough start to this school year?”

She shrugged. “No harder than you’ve been describing, from the sounds of it.” She gave her brother finger-guns and a toothy grin. “I’ll manage.”

Dipper grinned back. “Wanna try that one first, and start out the chair-shrinking tomorrow night?” She nodded, and after carefully unfurling the tiny footrug, they both took each-other’s hand and began shuffling around on the fabric.

There was a flash of blue light, and a shout of triumph.

 

* * *

 

So far, Dipper’s day had been fine. He had probably gotten some weird looks in art, as the teacher kept giving him glances and asking questions that he soon realized were designed to direct him into leading the class in an activity, or at least raise the general enthusiasm of the otherwise-sleepy morning class.

Two of her classmates, now Dipper’s temporary classmates, snickered behind their hands, and he could feel the heat race up his face in embarrassment. _Nicole and…Judy?_ He struggled to recall, since he didn’t share a class with either of them that he could remember..

Dipper felt like he was three inches tall, and spent the rest of the class buried as far into his sweater as he could manage. Mabel would be a day behind, but he couldn’t engage anyone for right now, and had to just hope she could compensate.

 _She likes being the center of attention, but every day? Man, nobody can be that perky all the time. She would have to-_ Dipper suddenly recalled times where his sister was quiet, distant at lunch together, and wondered if he had found out why she always deflected, never talked about why she was-

_Oh shit, lunch!_

He grabbed his backpack, practically sprinting to the cafeteria, but Mabel, or at least Mabel in his body, didn’t show for first five minutes, then ten. After minute fifteen hit, he began munching on his packed sandwich, when a flash of remembrance hit.

“Oh right, Ensemble practices,” he said to himself.

_Poor sis._

 

* * *

 

She tried. She really, really tried, but it seemed the more effort she put into it, the worse the results were.

Making a noise that sounded like an exasperated sigh transformed through careful avoidance of possibly insulting a student, their band director, Mr. Jameson, waved his hand.

“Again, if you please. _Remember,_ wet your lips, stay in the middle of the reed, and keep the air pressure steady, and we can hopefully avoid _more_ squeaks.”

Mabel did her best to ignore the stares from other band members and glares from fellow clarinet players, and tried as best as she could.

Over the course of the hour-long rehearsal, she continued to try.

In the neighborhood adjacent to the high school, a cat began yowling back in response.

Finally, after what felt like a pair of eternities, she was done.Re-emerging into the sunlight, Mabel noticed the empty cafeteria, and a gurgle of her stomach reminded her of the time.

 _Shoot, missed lunch with Dip. Hope his afternoon is going okay,_ she thought as she peeled open her yogurt container.

 

* * *

 

“Well well well, look at the little slag who was hiding in here.”

Dipper glanced up from where he had been washing his face. A misadventure with the eyeball they had dissected in science class had ejected some clear goo back onto him. Despite the insistence of the giggling teacher, he hadn’t found the experience “humorous,” and the class seemed somewhat surprised that he had insisted on running off to get cleaned off rather than just sitting and joking about having sheep eyeball gloop on his face.

It had been exhausting trying to keep his head up. Everyone seemed to expect him to be happy, laughing, joking, _all the time._ It was earning him weird looks, but Dipper ran out of the trademark Mabel smile-power after the first three periods, and had spent most of the day neutral, or perhaps his slightly aggravated normal resting expression.

And now, on top of all that, he had to deal with this. Still, after dealing with a demonic pyramid before he was even thirteen, the idea two jerks could scare him was laughable even to-

“So, slag, still got the hots for him, eh?”

“Who?” Dipper barely cared: Mabel had a boyfriend a month. None seemed to last long enough to bother committing to memory, and she was between boyfriends at the moment when he had asked her last evening. The girl, _Judy, I think,_ had begun to smirk.

“Who else? Same one as always.” _Same one?_ His brow creased in confusion. Mabel’s longest boyfriend had been her on-again-off-again penpal setup with Mermando, and even that was clearly not a serious thing once she’d gotten the first waterlogged postcard at home. Other than that, he doubted a single guy had lasted more than two months in direct exposure to the full zanyness of his sister. There just wasn’t anyone-

“Earth to perv-girl?” Fingers were snapped in front of his face, and he started.

Judy’s smirk continued as Nicole joined in as well. “Doy? Man, you’ve been crushing on him for at least five years, and you forgot your own brother’s name?”

Dipper felt his chest lurch.

Nicole saw the realization in his eyes, and pressed onwards. “Like, we all knew something was up when you made him that dweeby valentine, but man, you make it _obvious_.” She began counting, ticking off a list on her manicured nails. “Staring at him like a lovesick puppy every time you see him in the hall; writing a novel every time there’s a writing assignment about siblings; and of course, that time we heard you, heh, _moaning_ out…’Dipper, oh Dipper’”

Her tone was mocking, but beneath the naked surprise and worry, Dipper could feel a flutter stirring. _She felt the-the same way? I had always thought it was gross, something I should never think about, but it always seemed to spring back, like the idea was stronger than it would have been for something not real._

He took in a slow breath, and his mind pulled forward the memory of last night, kneeling in front of a mirror while nude, his hands exploring new sensations and feelings, no longer constrained to his mind’s eye.

Afterwards he had almost cried, the shame burning in his gut like a parasitic worm, but now?

_Now I wonder if she had done the same._

Judy made a retching noise. “Ugh, you fucking pervy slag! You’re fantasizing about him right now, aren’t you?” Dipper’s silence was betrayed by a slight flush, and the two girls just fake-gagged again. “You are! You going to go run off and jump on your brother’s dick now, you incestuous cow?”

Dipper didn’t meet their eyes, the flush of feelings and worries and excitements and guilt all mashing together into a trainwreck he couldn’t untangle. He felt his breath catch and his eyes water, and he felt as much as heard the two girls spit on his sweater.

“Fucking trash right here, eh? You sick fuck, don’t bother getting up till we’re gone.” She turned away, but then turned back as if a spare thought had struck her.

“And remember, you say shit? You complain that we’re reminding you not to jump your brother and fuck out a little retarded half-kid? We tell everybody, and I mean fucking _everybody_ , exactly what a depraved bitch you really are.”

She grinned, her too-perfect teeth perfectly white in the fluorescent light. “Toodles.”

They stalked out, the door snapping shut behind them. Dipper just went into a stall, slumped heavily on one of the toilets, and cried.

 

* * *

 

Mabel practically dragged him onto the rug, saying something about “I’ve had enough being stubbly, please and thank you.” There was a shuffle, a flash of light, and Dipper felt the familiar feelings of his old body once more.

There seemed to be a slight ringing in his ears, but he barely cared. He still felt numb, and Mabel sat next to him with a look of concern. The twin spit-stains had been carefully scrubbed off and out of the sweater, and dried so they were invisible, but glancing over to his sister Dipper thought he could still see them clear as day.

“Dip? What’s up?”

He sighed, and was quiet for a long moment. Then he muttered “I met Judy and Nicole today.”

It was like he had stung Mabel with a cattle prod. She stiffened, and said nothing. He could only imagine the flood of emotions running through her head as she slowly said “Sooo, what did you think of my, uh, ‘friends’?” She said the name with air quotes with her fingers, and he snorted with amusement before going quiet again, collecting his thoughts.

Finally he steeled himself, resolving to cut past all the bullshit rather than dance around the subject. “Mabes, do-do you really have feelings for me?”

Her breath caught, and as he looked to her face she looked away. When she spoke, her head was still twisted away from him, and she said in almost a whisper “Wou-would it be so bad if I did?”

He grinned, and reached out to grasp her hand. Giving it a gentle squeeze, he went to interlace his fingers through hers, and her head slowly turned, disbelief and joy and confusion and excitement in equal parts dancing across her features.

“Nope. Not in the slightest.” After a moment, he grinned back. “Mabes, I really like-love you, too.”

She let out a short breath of surprise and shock, a huge grin still plastered across her face. Dipper leaned forward, to give her a small peck if she wanted; besides his mother and grandmother and a single merman, Dipper had never really kissed anyone, and he decided not to overdo it in case Hollywood had been wrong about technique and he just made a fool of himself.

Mabel, however, nearly lunged forward, meeting his lips with hers in a loving and prolonged kiss, before he felt her lips part slightly as she took part of his lip inter her mouth. She giggled, pulling back and smiling as she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

“So, um, can I just be the first one to say-” she stuck her fingers into the air and wiggled a little dance “-Yaaaay!”

Dipper grinned, feeling warmth suffusing his entire being, but a nugget of fear and anxiety remained. Mael noticed as his expression fell somewhat, and then hers fell as well.

“Yeah, those two…” She sighed, then shrugged. “We’ll need to be super-careful, Dip, but I do worry about those two jerkwads.” She met his gaze, biting her lip. “I mean, what if they find out their hunch was right?”

Dipper patted her knee absent-mindedly, his thoughts racing. “We’ll figure something out.”

That night, as Mabel curled up against him, Dipper carefully extricated himself from the covers. She groaned in her sleep, a little whimpering noise that made him smile a bit before he steeled himself to the task.

_It’s going to be an ugly few years, if my estimates are correct, but it’ll be worth it._

He pulled out a specific item from their bundle, an old winter balaclava, and rummaging for a bit, found the perfect plastic doll on Mabel’s shelves.

Then he pulled the time-tape, and disappeared in a flash of light.

 

* * *

 

The kindergarten class was just getting started; names had been passed around, a few songs had been sung, and now it was quiet time for the kids to “make a new friend” from among their classmates.

The teacher had encouraged Dipper and Mabel to find different friends, despite being in the same class. They hadn’t been pleased, but had eventually agreed, and Dipper could see his past self in a corner of the room as he glanced through the doorway.

The fake beard itched, and the gaudy red sunglasses were even worse, but Grunkle Stan had managed to instill in Dipper that the best disguise was one that covered major identifying facial features, and an obtuse characteristic that was false, and ideal for fixation.

Hence, the hippie-era sunglasses.

He made himself busy, acting as a “parent” volunteer, but kept an eye on Mabel and the equally-young Judy and Nicole. Sure enough, he could see them starting to push over his sister, saying something mean that was causing her to almost cry.

Dipper leaned forward, placing the grotesque plastic doll right behind the girls. He gently tapped a shoulder before turning, his back to them as they discovered the hideous winged creature of the doll. There was a shriek, and as the girls looked up to the teacher, Dipper flicked on the flashlight up his sleeve. In a subtle shower of pink light, the doll vanished to the microscopic scale. He savored a few minutes of the girls swearing it had been there a minute ago, then excused himself into the hallway.

A flash of blue light, and he had the doll in-hand once more. The memory of having it removed from his pocket earlier formed, but Dipper had learned not to worry too much about the paradox aspect of it; although Ford would never admit to it, the paradox issues tended not to be too severe of an issue at all so long as you didn’t think too hard about it and didn’t try to fix it.

He appeared in classrooms for kindergarten, then early elementary, then late. Each time, when the two bullies would pick on his twin, Dipper enlarged the doll, making it larger each time, vanishing it as soon as they called for help or someone else would easily see.

While memories in a paradox were easily the strongest only for the tape-wielder, an echo of the memories still persisted in others as well, and each time the screams got louder, more shrill, terrified, frantic. Once or twice someone would catch a glimpse of the doll, but a search never produced the actual doll after he had shrunken it to the size of a dust mote.

In fifth grade, as they giggled and fished out a huge valentine made from other cards from the recycle bin, on top of the existing pile of discarded cards from the other classmates, he enlarged the doll much larger than before. It went from being the size of his hand to huge, tall enough to cast a distinct shadow over the two. They both froze; Nicole started to cry a little, still refusing to turn around, but then Dipper shrank the doll after a long half-minute and vanished alongside it.

The jaunts continued, skipping through time until he finally reached the fateful day. The girls had almost sprinted out of the bathroom, breaking into a pile of malicious giggles as Mabel’s tears could be heard from within the restroom.

“Oh my _gawd_ , did you hear her? She totally does have a thing for her-”

Dipper struck. In a flash, a black cotton bedsheet was thrown as both girls were reduced to the size of beetles. Careful to avoid crushing them, Dipper wrapped the sheet around to keep them trapped, as their high-pitched screams and shouted curses were almost inaudible.

Then he dropped the doll into the ball of clothing, and the screams cut off as quickly as they began. Moving his head to the fabric near where the figure came to a rest, he hissed in the most angry voice he could summon “ _If you ever do this again, I will find you.”_ He gave the bag a gentle shake. “ _I will trap you.”_ He shook the bag again.

“ _And I will crush your bones beneath my teeth.”_

A final shake, and then he gently laid them out onto the sidewalk and enlarged them. Nicole was unconscious, her wrist at an unnatural angle, but Judy was conscious, eyes clenched shut, whimpering. Whisking the blanket away, Dipper vanished in the tape’s blue flare before she could open her eyes to see what had happened.

Morning came, and with it Dipper was more tired than he had ever felt before. By his reckoning, almost a year and a half had elapsed last night, but it was worth it.

As Mabel finished pulling on her sweater for the day and gave Dipper a warm smile tinged with the worry from last night, he just yawned and smiled, handing her the doll.

Mabel just cocked her head in confusion, and Dipper grinned.

“Think of it as jerk repellant.”

She cocked her head again, but just shrugged and tucked the doll into her purse with the owlish, milky-white and too-large-eyed face sticking out. Tucking her arm through his, the twins walked downstairs into the newest chapter of their lives.

Together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @bizarrejoe: Glad you’re back again. Here my request for this angstmas: After coming back from GF, dipper and Mabel brought back souvenirs, like the time traveling tape and the size altering torch, and well a cutout of the body swapping rug. After a discussion, they decide to use it to experience each other’s life. They realize that they didn’t imagine the kind of hell each other went through on their daily lives.


	6. Submission

“Dipper, I want you to reach under my skirt, and feel how wet I am. Understood?”

He swallowed, glancing around the almost-empty Mystery Shack gift shop. Soos was in the main exhibit area showing off some of the titular mysteries, and there was just an old nearsighted couple tottering in the far back, looking at bootleg ghost-hunting DVDs Stan had for sale.

“ _Yes mistress_ ,” he murmured, feeling a twinge which he feverishly wished would contain itself, for now at least.

His sister took a long stride towards him, her long legs under the skirt drawing his eye as she strode to stand behind him. Whispering in his ear, her hot breath caused his crotch to warm, despite his fervent hopes against it, and soon he felt the distinct cold pressure of the chastity cage’s frame against his valiantly-growing erection. The pain made him groan as she said “What was that? I couldn’t hear you; perhaps you needed more stimulation?”

Her hand darted into the front of his pants; sweatpants, as she had dictated that morning, for the easy access she now took advantage of. Dipper let out a frustrated whimper as she fondled him, her touch teasing through the gaps in the bars of the cage, playing with his balls briefly and touching the coldness of the tiny padlock against them for a teasing minute before withdrawing her hand.”

Dipper just shook his head, and she tutted. He stammered for a moment, then said in as loud of a voice as he dared “Yes, mistress!”

Mabel cocked her eyebrow in mock teasing anger. “Oh? Yes, you need more stimulation? Or yes, you understood?” As her hand went for his cock again, Dipper’s hand slipped under her skirt, running a finger along her length. The crotchless latex felt as he imagined it from when she showed him that morning, and several times since; he had endeavored not to think about it to avoid a painful erection, but Mabel had insisted on bending over, flashing him the sight of per puffy lips through the pink material, the faux frills around the edge simply drawing attention to the flesh beneath.

He withdrew a damp finger, looking to her face as she nodded. “Good. Now taste me.”

Dipper licked the wetness off of his fingers, tasting her aroma and feeling his cock give another pathetic surge against its prison. He hummed a little appreciation, and Mabel looked to be satisfied for now before she spun back. Dipper swallowed as she reached within the pocket of her hoodie, withdrawing a metal shape.

“Pacifica picked this up earlier this week; do you think you’ve been a good enough little slave to deserve a special reward?” she said, opening her hand to reveal a silver buttplug capped with a blue glass crystal on one end.

Dipper eyed the butt plug. He had enjoyed the occasional anal play they had experimented with before, but this was notably bigger than an exploratory finger, and he was already under duress from the cage. Still, he knew that denying Mabel now could be a bad idea, and so he hesitated-

Hesitation was the wrong answer.

Mabel’s eyes narrowed, and she took a half-step forward, one hand reaching up under his shirt and vest, and reached for one of his erect nipples. She simultaneously squeezed and twisted slightly, and Dipper felt a knee threaten to buckle from the sudden shock of pain as she hissed “ _I didn’t hear you,_ slave. _Do you think you deserve this? Or do I need to try something…_ different?”

The emphasis she placed on the last part made Dipper’s blood chill, and he shook his head. When she wiggled the plug a few inches from his face, he nodded, not wanting to tempt her reaction should she be denied twice.

“Good. Here, I’ll even get it ready for you,” she murmured. The plug disappeared under her skirt with a sigh, and a few seconds of wiggling later, she reached into the back of Dipper’s sweatpants and began teasing the lukewarm head of the plug at his anus.

Dipper tensed, trying to force himself to relax as he felt the insistent pressure, but he still gasped at the pain as his twin’s natural lubrication turned out to not quite be sufficient to avoid the pain of insertion. Still, the pressure continued, and after a long few seconds the bulk had passed the ring of muscle, and he felt it suddenly contract around the narrow juncture, tugging the cool metal to rest between his ass cheeks.

The sensation threatened to tease the point within him he had hoped it would not, and trying to wiggle and  get comfortable just stimulated it even more. Mabel had apparently anticipated this, as she took a brief glance around before ducking beneath the counter. Standing in front of the register, Dipper hissed out between his breath as his cock swelled to its limits within the cage, the pressure mounting as much as it was able, until he felt a strangled lurch within his crotch and his thighs began to buck slightly.

Mabel took this signal to pull down the front of his pants enough to expose the cage, his swollen shaft constrained within and red with exertion and release. A thin dribble of cum leaked from one end, and Mabel reached out a slim finger to wipe it off of the end of his cock; the stimulation caused him to buck one last time, and then she replaced the pants as he panted for breath following the release.

“Open up.” He did so, and she deposited the pair of fingers into his mouth. Dipper obediently cleaned them off, tasting his salty and hot warmth as he licked her clean, and she pulled them loose with a pop.

“Present.” Dipper had been ready for this from the nights before, and opened his mouth to show her the white gobbet of cum. Mabel nodded approvingly, saying “Good. You may now swallow.”

He did so, resisting the urge to shiver at the odd sensation and aftertaste. After a long moment, he spoke softly.

“Mabes, this has been amazing, but do you think tonight we might be able to-”

He cut off as she snapped her head to glare at him. _“What_ did you call me?”

He swallowed, and reworded his request. “My apologies, um, mistress, but do you think tonight we might be able to go down to the-”

A pair of fingers alighted on his lips, silencing him.

“Oh, we have _so_ much better plans than anything _mundane_ tonight.”

Dipper bit back the urge to sigh aloud as she continued.

“As with this weekend, we expect you at the Northwest Manor. 8PM, sharp. Dressed as before, as befitting your status. Understood?”

Dipper nodded, and Mabel gave him a luscious wink. As Soos came into the shop with the latest tour group, Mabel reverted to her normal goofier tone, but with a distinct lusty undertone “Awesome. Catch you tonight, bro-bro,” she said with a pair of finger-guns as she strode out of the Shack.

He sighed, shifting a little and feeling a threatening twinge from his flaccid cock as the plug bumped in turn.

 _Well, time to see what they have in stock for me this week_ , he thought as he rang up the older couple for _Vampires Built the Pyramids, Part VI._

* * *

The door to the manor creaked open by way of the butler, who nodded to no-one in particular before snapping his fingers. On command, the various cooks, maids, bellhops, valets, waitresses, servers, and other roles that made up the Northwest staff filed out towards the carpool. Dipper just stood there in his trench coat, sweating in the summer warmth but unwilling to take off the coat for fear of what the butler and others would see beneath.

Instead of offering to take the coat, the head butler instead simple gave him a bow, and shouted in a commanding tone “Master Dipper has arrived, my lady.” Then he nodded again, to Dipper this time, and pulled the doors shut behind the Pines boy.

He wandered to the center of the great hall, again in awe of the seemingly endless riches on arrogant display. Pacifica’s parents were in Spain for the summer, and so she had been given the run of the mansion in their absence.

As well, it appeared, as a substantial line of credit judging from the purchases she had made for their benefit this summer.

“Slave?” The voice was distant, and he couldn’t make out if Pacifica or Mabel was the one who spoke. Still, he stopped moving, and called back “Yes, mistresses?”

“Leave your coat there; on the floor will do. Come upstairs to the garden.”

He did as instructed, and could hear a distant click of the glass doors to the garden opening. As the trenchcoat fell, his exposed flesh gained a layer of goosebumps for a moment from the temperature difference. He had a black leather vest on, one chosen by his sister explicitly to replace his blue puffy one, and a pair of black leather chaps on as well. For underwear he wore the navy blue satin thong he had been given earlier that summer, adjusted as best as he could to make room for the chastity cage that still enveloped his slowly-wakening shaft.

Topping off the ensemble was a thick leather wrist cuff around each wrist and ankle, and a similar collar around his neck. Heavy loops for chains or ropes dangled from each, although for now they remained empty.

He made his way up the huge flight of stairs, pausing twice as the motion continued to reawaken his erection and press the plug’s tip into his prostate. Catching his breath and willing the erection to die down, Dipper finally reached the open doors, and stepped outside.

The high walls of the mansion’s property border shielded them from any observers, but the simultaneous warmth of the fading sun and the heat of the day mingled with the tickling chill of the slight breeze as well.

He had barely stepped through the ivy-overgrown arbor when Mabel struck from behind. In one smooth motion she reached forward, clipping one end of a chain leash to Dipper’s oversized collar loop, and pulled downwards while using her other hand to spin his shoulder and push down as well.

The result was Dipper’s strangled shout of alarm as he suddenly found himself on his knees, the impact painful despite the chaps. Mabel stood before him, a look of contempt more and more familiar these days on her face; she still wore the same pink latex as before, and the rest of the bodysuit was now visible with her sweater discarded. The material revealed her ample breasts, and the same white fringe helped call attention to both them as well as the upper borders of the figure-hugging garment. She had also donned a garter belt and fine fishnet tights with a lacy motif; these mirrored the lacy fingerless gloves she wore, ones Dipper recognized from her own collection before the beginning of this summer.

_She had worn those gloves the night after I had given them, as a sort of belated birthday gift. They had tickled, scratched, as she ran them across my chest, as we giggled and kissed and embraced and gasped together, her body twisting on mine as my strength filled her and-_

The memory was cut short as his twin took a step forward, placing herself astride his face. Dutifully, Dipper leaned forward, inhaling her musk and running a tongue in and along her slit. She moaned a little, biting her lips slightly as one hand went to run its way through his tousled hair.

The other, the hand still holding the cold chain of his leash, reached up to massage her own breast. Dipper longed to reach up, to explore her body and outfit with his own hands, but lessons taught through pleasure, pain, and denial earlier had reinforced that he was to ask permission, rather than seek forgiveness.

His sister gasped, and Mabel let out a keening noise through clenched teeth as her thighs threatened to crush Dipper’s head in her orgasm. As she shuddered and Dipper felt the surge of her musky flavor in his mouth, he could feel a distant sensation of movement as the cold chain rested on his shoulder for a second.

Then there was a slight tug, and he disengaged himself from Mabel’s slit with a gasp. Pacifica was standing beside him, and once again she had pulled out the stops. She was wearing some sort of long latex ballgown, one that came to an almost corset-like narrowness down her legs and left her nude ass emphasized but completely exposed. This ivory-and-gold pattern was also reflected in a corset and lacy sleeved shawl, this time in satin rather than latex, and these colors blended with her snow-white latex gloves, glittering gold eye shadow and rouge, and her pale white lipstick.

Pacifica’s gaze was distant, cold, as it always was like this. “Is the slave ready to serve?”

Dipper nodded slowly. Without a change in expression, Pacifica proceeded. “Is the slave ready to beg?”

He nodded again, and there was a short noise of approval. His leash was given a slight tug as Pacifica walked over to the far side of a decorative boulder in the garden. Coming around the edge, Dipper could suddenly see that anchors had been driven into the ground, to serve as attachment points for a peripheral webbing of thumb-thick nylon ropes and attachment loops. Pacifica fed his collar lead through one of these, and then pulled it until Dipper was on his toes, with the bulk of his body weight resting against the lukewarm stone.

Grabbing his wrists in steely grasps, Pacifica attached them to corners of the web of ropes, leaving him spread-eagle and on his stomach, his back exposed to the sky.

“Is the slave ready to beg?”

Dipper clenched his eyes shut, and nodded.

There was a whistle, and a noise like a gunshot. Dipper felt a flare of pain across the right side of his butt as the whip snapped; Pacifica was scary-effective with her whip, and while Dipper had seen her explode watermelons with it before, she was skilled enough to just leave a careful tapestry of bruises across his exposed flesh.

She proceeded to do so, asking after each stroke  “Is the slave enjoying this? Is the slave ready to please his mistress?” She ignored each of his affirmative nods and whimpers, and he could hear her voice drop, her breathing intensify with each stroke. Soon they were coming farther apart, as she would take time to leisurely stroll up, stroking along the flared lines of stinging pain with an unmarked glove, cupping his face and even planting the occasional kiss on a cheek or lashmark.

He could see from where his head was tilted that Mabel had taken a seat on a bench, and had begun to mastrubate with her fingers. As she watched the blows land, Dipper could see her eyes flash with hunger, and soon she was letting out whimpers of pleasure with each crack of the whip.

After what seemed like an eternity, there was the sound of coiled leather being dropped, and he felt the cuffs on his limbs being unclipped from the ropes. However, rather than move him away, Pacifica instead reversed the clipping, leaving him on his back, but finally able to see what was going on from the slight angle.

Mabel was looking between him and Pacifica with anticipation, and Pacifica….

Her eyes flashed with desire as she saw him, licking her lips but managing to leave the lipstick unmarred. Reaching forward with a tiny sliver of metal, she cupped his aching balls for a longing second, before unlatching the cage and letting it fall aside.

Dipper gasped with the sensation, and his erection began to thunder to life. The sensation was painful in and of itself, mixing and melding with the low burn of the whipmarks pressed against the rough surface of the rock behind him, but Pacifica was stroking his cock with long, lazy movements, before she finally turned. Running a single finger into the exposed opening on the back of her gown, Dipper could see her run the wetted finger up the line of her ass and back again, before she slowly braced against the boulder on either side of Dipper’s hips, and lowered herself onto him.

The sensation was unbelievable, and Dipper started to moan with pleasure before he felt a sharp jolt of pain; Mabel had slapped him, wagging a finger as she glowered.

“I think the slave knows they are to be seen and not heard, capish?” He just nodded, and bit back another whimper of ecstasy as Pacifica slid almost entirely off of him, before seating herself fully again with a single smooth motion.

The rhythm began to increase, but as Dipper could feel his orgasm start to buckle, a tight pair of fingers coiled around the base of his shaft. The pressure was intense, and Dipper could feel the orgasm falter and bubble away as it had that afternoon; Pacifica released her grip, carefully licking the dollop of cum that had managed to escape off and spreading it with a single gloved finger across her equally-white lips, before licking the stickiness off.

Mabel took her place, teasing Dipper’s cock with a few kisses and quick sucks until it began to flicker back to life. Soon, her ministrations had it back into full roar, and she knelt forward; the angle of the rock was enough that she was able to support herself on her knees as she settled onto him, and once in cowgirl position she began to rock back and forth.

Dipper stifled the moans that threatened to re-emerge, and instead just enjoyed the fervor of his sister enveloping his shaft, her whimpers and heated breaths as she pounded onto his hips with reckless abandon. The bouncing against the unyielding stone was beginning to affect his lingering lashes, and Dipper could feel an aching pain starting to emerge, but his orgasm grew even more swiftly.

He only managed to gasp out “M-mistress-” before he jolted and came. His sister cried out and hunched over, shuddering with each rope of cum he shot into her, her breath coming swiftly as she reached down and furiously mastrubated to bring herself over the last tiny ledge to yet another shudder of orgasm.

He was still catching his breath when Mabel practically sprang off of him. With Pacifica’s help, his restraints were unclipped yet again, and he was left to fall, sore and exhausted, to his knees. Mabel again stood astride him, although this time her mound was already pressed against his face as she caught her breath and sought to regain her strength.

“Clean me, slave.” Dipper did so, and began washing her slit with his tongue, licking sweat and cum off as his sister whimpered and shivered. He stimulated her clit as much as he dared, but mostly stuck to the command he was given, and lapped up the dripping semen as her muscles pulsed and oozed it out.

Pacifica soon stood adjacent, and at her unspoken command Dipper reached forward and used one of his free hands to run along her soaking slit, running a finger inside as often as he dared. Mostly he received a brief, sharp slap on the wrist with a gloved hand, so Dipper stayed mostly to the exterior of the girl’s shaven pussy.

After a few long minutes, the cleaning was complete, and Dipper sat back. Mabel and Pacifica both took seats on benches, their composure cracking slightly as they giggled slightly in the afterglow.

Speaking softly, Dipper said again “So, I was thinking, did we want to maybe go down to the beach tomorrow? Might be a nice, uh, change of pace?”

He received no immediate reprimand for his speaking out, but rather than the nods he had been hoping for, Mabel and Pacifica just exchanged a look and grinned.

“Oh yeah; you could try using that new waterproof vibe-” Mabel said, as Pacifica interjected “But don’t forget that we’ve got that shibari kit, and could do that under a swimsuit-”. As the two of them went back and forth, Dipper could feel his heart sink.

_What was wrong with having just a relaxing day on the beach?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt, from an Anon: Dipper is in a S&M relationship with Mabel and Pacifica as their submissive but has doubts if it is healthy
> 
> Note: This is the last Angstmas story for this year. I hope you enjoyed it, and thanks for reading!


End file.
